Omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod, we’re getting our kittens TODAY! We pick them up from the fostering folks this evening.
I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the next few hours. I have degenerated into a quivering mass of kitten-obsessed idiocy. So to torment myself (and you all) further: here is a picture of Talisker, asleep on my lap.
P.S. KITTENS!
At Skepticon 4, I didn’t just give my “Why Are You Atheists So Angry?” talk. I was also on a panel discussion about how rationalists should approach death — along with Julia Galef, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and James Croft, moderated by Jesse Galef. Of course we were able to reach a conclusive consensus on this question in 45 minutes…
Yeah, right. But it was a fascinating discussion, with areas of both disagreement and agreement that I totally didn’t expect. I only wish we’d had more time. I think death without a belief in the supernatural is a hugely important topic, and one that we need to talk about more. Fear of death is, I think, one of the main reasons that people stay attached to religious beliefs, and the more we can get non-religious philosophies of death spread out into the world, the more people will be comfortable with atheism. Anyway. Enjoy the panel!
This piece was originally published on AlterNet.
The child rape scandal at Penn State raises inevitable comparisons with the Catholic Church. Does religion make these kinds of abuses worse?
I can’t be the only person who heard about the Penn State child rape scandal and thought, “Holy crap — it’s just like the Catholic Church.” The abuse of power by a trusted authority figure; the cover-up by people in authority; the unwillingness of witnesses to speak out; the grotesque, morally bankrupt defenses of a beloved institution by its followers… all of it is depressingly familiar.
And I can’t be the only critic of religion who’s been wondering, “Hmmm. If Penn State has been acting like the Catholic Church… then did the Catholic Church child rape scandal actually have anything to do with religion?”
I still think it does. But I think it’s a complicated question… and I want to take a closer look.
Apologists for the Catholic Church and its role in the extensive child rape scandal often use the “But everyone else does it!” defense. “Priests aren’t the only people in positions of trust and power over children who abuse that power,” they say. “Parents, relatives, teachers, babysitters, coaches — they rape children as well. It’s all terrible… but it’s unfair to single out the Catholic Church as if it were special.”
Atheists and other critics of the Church typically respond to this defense — after tearing their hair out and screaming — by pointing out: The rapes aren’t the scandal. The cover-up — that’s the scandal. The rapes of children are a horrible tragedy. The scandal is the fact that the Catholic Church hid the rapes, and protected the child-raping priests from discovery and prosecution: lying to law enforcement, concealing evidence, paying off witnesses, moving child-raping priests from diocese to diocese so they could rape a whole new batch of children in a place where they wouldn’t be suspected. The scandal is the fact that it wasn’t just a few individuals in the ranks who protected and enabled the child-raping priests: it was large numbers of Church officials, including high-ranking officials, acting as a cold-blooded matter of Church policy. The scandal is the fact that the Church treated their own stability and reputation as a higher priority than, for fuck’s sake, children not being raped.
And many critics of religion have concluded that the nature of religion itself is largely to blame for this scandal. They have argued that religion’s lack of any sort of reality check, and its belief in a perfect supernatural moral authority that transcends mere human concerns, makes religious institutions like the Catholic Church far more vulnerable to abuses of this kind.
I’ve made this argument myself. And in my own writings on this subject, I’ve asked what I thought was a rhetorical question: “If these scandals had taken place in any organization other than a religious one — would you still be part of it? If it were your political party, your softball league, your university, your children’s school, your employer? Would you still be part of it? Would you still pay your league dues and show up for softball night? Would you still pay your tuition and send your kids off to the school every day? Or would you be walking out in moral outrage?”
But it seems that this question wasn’t so rhetorical. It seems that, at least sometimes, the answer to that question is, “Yup — we’d be defending our school.”
At least sometimes, the answer is, “If we see our coach raping a child — we won’t alert the police. If we’re in positions of authority in a school and we hear reports about our coach raping a child — we won’t alert the police, and we won’t investigate. And if we hear that a coach at our school raped children, and that the authorities at the school knew about it and didn’t alert the police or investigate, we will become outraged — not at the fact that the rapes occurred, not at the fact that the witnesses and school authorities did nothing, but at what we see as unfair treatment of the perpetrators, and at the very fact that the media is covering it.”
Clearly, defending the indefensible is not unique to religion.
Clearly, institutions centered on something other than a belief in the supernatural are perfectly capable of inspiring this grotesquely contorted form of loyalty. This unwillingness to believe that the people and institutions we admire could do anything that vile; this ability to rationalize actions we would normally find thoroughly despicable when we’ve made a commitment to the people who perpetrated them… this clearly isn’t just about religion. This is about the more fucked-up directions that the human brain can go in.
So I want to take a step back. I want to be rigorous, and ask: Is there anything special about the child rape scandal in the Catholic Church? Does the fact that the Catholic Church is a religious organization have any effect on how the child rape scandal has been playing out for them? Is there any real difference between the child rape scandal in the Catholic Church, and the child rape scandal at Penn State? Continue reading “Child Rape, Penn State, and the Catholic Church: Is Religion Especially Bad?”
We pick up our kittens TOMORROW!
I promise that this “cat photos every day” thing won’t last. But right now, Ingrid and I are in an advanced state of cat deprivation. Having kittens in the world who are ours but who don’t live in our home yet is making us climb the walls. (Good for helping us kitten-proof the apartment!) Once we have the actual kittehs, I’ll dial it down. Well, okay, that’s probably a big fat lie. When we first get the actual kittehs, you’re almost certainly going to be deluged with photos of them. But then I’ll dial it back to a reasonable pace.
Anyway. This is Houdini, perching.
Yes, there is much to be said about her deep, watchful gaze. But my primary observation on this particular image is: PAWS!
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: Jen McCreight (of BlagHag fame) is one of the best speakers we have in this movement. She’s not a slamming powerhouse of swelling oratory: she’s just really clear, chatty, friendly, funny, approachable, and excellent at conveying complicated ideas clearly without talking down to her audience. I will hear her speak anytime — even if it’s on a topic I’ve heard her speak on before.
Her talk at Skepticon 4 was no exception. It’s sort of a Genetics 101 for a lay audience, with a focus on common misconceptions about genetics and dumb ways genetics get portrayed in news media and pop culture. If you want to know about this stuff but are daunted by dry or forbidding texts, this would be an excellent way to start. Enjoy!
A number of comment threads in this blog have been getting very heated, to the point of being ugly and unpleasant. So I want to remind everyone of my comment policy, and review some of its key components.
Please note that this comment policy applies to EVERYONE. Whether I agree with you or not; whether you’re defending me or not. It doesn’t matter. I have banned people who were defending me passionately, because they did so in ways that consistently violated my comment policy. (If you’re wondering, “Hm, is she talking about me?” — chances are good that yes, I am.)
And I want to remind everyone of a key component of this policy:
Be respectful of other commenters in this blog. No personal insults; no namecalling; no flame wars.
In comment threads in this blog, I encourage lively dissension and debate. I do not, however, accept personal insults aimed at other commenters. I am fine with vigorous and even snarky critiques of ideas and behavior — but when that crosses the line into personal insults, I stop being fine. “That’s a stupid idea” is okay (I’d personally prefer it if you worded it differently, and if your critiques of ideas consistently takes that tone I might ask you to dial it back, but just by itself it won’t get you banned). “You’re stupid” is not okay.
UPDATE: Actually — I’m going to amend this. I’d personally MUCH prefer it if you don’t use personally insulting rhetoric aimed at ideas. I’m not going to absolutely rule it out — yet — but I’m going to VERY STRONGLY request that you not do it. If someone is being infuriating, please take the high road. Be the bigger person. Find the pleasures of skillfully disemboweling someone with icy politeness. And do not play the “But they said it first!” game. Do not assume that, because someone else was insulting first, therefore it’s okay for you to be insulting back. Do not escalate things. Dial things back.
I also draw a distinction between criticism of public figures and criticism of other commenters in this blog. If you want to call Rick Warren a bigot or Richard Dawkins a fascist, Ted Haggard a hypocrite or Christopher Hitchens a fucking asshole, that’s more or less okay. (I prefer that people keep that sort of rhetoric to a minimum even about public figures, as it tends to shed more heat than light; but I’ve been known to indulge in it myself, so I’m not going to insist that other people consistently hold themselves to a higher standard. Excessive use of it may result in consequences. Occasional use of it is cool.)
But if Warren or Dawkins or Haggard or Hitchens were to show up in this blog and start commenting, I would ask people to stop that sort of language immediately. When you talk about public figures, think of yourself as an op-ed writer. When you talk about other commenters in this blog, think of yourself as a guest in my home, engaging in conversation with other guests. If you can’t be civil, then take it outside.
Again: There’s a difference between criticizing ideas and actions and insulting people. When you make comments in this blog, please draw that distinction. Lively debate is fine, but keep it respectful. Listen to each other. Cut each other slack. Don’t leap immediately to the worst possible interpretation of what somebody is saying, and don’t treat each other like enemies. If you prefer a more aggressive style of online conversation, there are other blogs where that’s considered standard and indeed desirable. This isn’t one of them. This is not, for instance, Pharyngula. I love that Pharyngula is Pharyngula — I have big fun over there, and I think it has a hugely valuable place in our community. But I also think there’s value in having a place where people can get their ideas vigorously critiqued without getting a faceful of venom. I want this blog to be one of them. Please respect that.
Please note, also, that not respecting my right to have a comment policy and to moderate my own blog is, itself, a violation of the comment policy. If you want to question or discuss or critique details of the policy, I certainly welcome that. But please respect my basic right to moderate my own blog, and to try to maintain a certain tone in it.
And if you can’t respect this comment policy — please go visit another blog instead.
Thanks, everybody!
This is Talisker, being a tiny small little, curled up in Ingrid’s arms.
And this is Talisker, being a tiny small little, curled up in my arms.
I cannot believe we have to wait until Wednesday to take them home. We are seriously jonesing. There is no way we’re going to make it that long.
*****
UPDATE: Tiny small little!
It seems like a good idea to state and clarify my policies about email, including my policies about privacy expectations.
My email address is greta [at] gretachristina [dot] com. If you want to contact me, that’s the best way to do it. (I almost never read my Facebook inbox.) Just so you know: I’m not able to reply to every email I get, or even to most emails I get, or even to a tenth of the emails I get. I apologize for that. I simply don’t have time: if I replied to every email I got, I wouldn’t have time to eat or sleep, much less blog. I do read my emails, and I pay attention to them.
On privacy:
I want readers to be able to email me about sensitive matters — including religion and sex — without fear of exposure. Therefore, if you email me, and your email does not include a threat to myself or others, I will keep your email private. I may summarize the gist of it to friends or colleagues, and I may refer to it in a generic sense (i.e., “I get lots of emails from people saying that I helped change their mind about religion”), but I will not otherwise make it public without permission.
I do sometimes publish emails from readers here in the blog. I only do so after asking their permission. If I do publish an email, I will respect the writer’s wishes to be published anonymously or under a pseudonym if they prefer, and/ or to redact any part of the email they don’t wish to make public.
There is one exception:
If your email contains a threat to myself or to others, I entirely withdraw my offer of privacy. I reserve the right to make public the entire email — with full name, online handle, email address, IP address, URL, and any and all other identifying information — of anyone who emails me with a threat to myself or to others. I reserve the right to publish all or part of this information on my blog, to inform any and all individuals and organizations about it, and to inform the police about it, at my discretion.
That’s all. We now return you to your regularly scheduled ranting about religion and pictures of cute kittens.
In the last few years atheists have become seriously organized, mobilized, visible, vocal and unapologetic about their atheism.
If there are just two things you take away from this story, they should be:
1. Anti-atheist bigotry and discrimination, of a completely overt, very ugly kind, is real.
2. Atheists are no longer putting up with it. If you fuck with them, they will fuck with you right back. And they know how to do it.
Two recent events in the news illustrate this bigotry vividly. In the first, a billboard company in Ohio rejected an atheist billboard campaign — at the last minute, the week before the billboards were scheduled to go up, after weeks of extensive discussion and planning with no hint of trouble — because the atheist content was deemed “obscene, unnecessarily offensive and/or not in the best interests of the community at large.”
In the second story, a local merchant near an atheist conference put a sign on his shop door, explicitly saying that conference attendees were not welcome in his Christian business. And he got a faceful of Internet fury for his trouble.
*
Thus begins my latest piece for AlterNet, 2 Shocking Attacks on Atheism — And How Atheists Fought Back. To read more about these recent incidents of anti-atheist bigotry — and the atheist community pushing back fast and furious against it — read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!
Oh, and BTW: If you’re mad about the Ohio billboard company rejecting the atheist advertising because the content was atheist? Here’s their contact info. It’s the LIND Media Company: you can call them at 800/444-LIND; call LIND vice-president Maura Siegenthaler at 419/571-4286 [cell]; email Siegenthaler at [email protected]; fax LIND at 419-522-1323; or write them at 409-411 North Main Street, Mansfield, OH 44902.
It’s so weird that these cats are ours, but we don’t have them in our home yet. We only spent about an hour and a half with them on our adoption visit — but we miss them already. Last night I was hearing creaking noises (old building), and I kept thinking it was a cat pattering down the hall.
So until we can take them home, I’m consoling myself with posting pictures to my blog. Here is Houdini in super-closeup. She really is a beauty, isn’t she? And she looks like she has such hidden depths. A very philosophical cat, this one. I’m sure she’ll solve the problem of consciousness in our lifetime.
KITTEH!
